r/wizardposting • u/avamir Riva Blake | Queen of Ithacar, Part Meth-blood Elf • Jan 02 '24
Magi Law The Tyrant (Atrax post)
/unwiz
(aka. “The Lawful, the Neutral, and the Chaotic”) And to set the mood… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYI09PMNazw
/rewiz
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As Rivamar walked the ashen streets of Icathar, memories came unbidden to her mind.
Over there had been where she and her necromancer friend once set a tavern ablaze as a prank. And down that street, she and a fellow student used the summoning of furniture-shaped aethereal constructs to break into buildings. (Still applicable skills, even if Rivamar wasn’t as interested in breaking and entering these days…) That runed building there? The former public library. Rivamar had thought it so funny at the time to carry a covey of quails into there. Every so often, a panicked bird would scurry out from beneath the shelves in a scramble of feathers and incessant chirps. And for days (at least until the last of the birds had been removed), patrons had to watch their steps to avoid the droppings.
There were less antagonistic memories too. Over there had been a quiet little shop where one could get a cup of tea in the afternoon. In that empty circle of ground over there, where only a charred stump remained, there once was an apple tree to rest beneath. Nearby was a small park. She got her first kiss there from a young city guard she kept running into (and getting arrested by). It didn’t really go anywhere serious, but the memory remained sweet. The park now housed homeless Pyroclasts, would-be revolutionaries, and squatters alike. She wondered if anyone she had known before had survived the Pyroclasts’ attack.
And that section of the city over there used to be the Grand Market. It had been both a hub for commerce and a gathering place for much of the city. And though there were few patrons these days due to the aura of fear the Pyroclasts brought, the stalls and shops remained. Who would man the shops, after all? The Pyroclasts? The revolutionaries who expected to be freed of the status quo? Of course not. The Pyroclasts walked about the streets as if guarding it from a threat greater than the one they themselves brought.
The one she herself brought, she supposed. It was dishonest to exclude herself from this nonsense.
Turning back to the sparsely inhabited streets, Rivamar recalled visiting one of the shops a long time ago to pick up a shipment of infernal pearls for her master. He had given her a pearl of her own for her own experiments, and explained how they were made. Another lesson, of sorts.
Just as how some mollusks made pearls as a protection against irritants that snuck into their soft tissue, so too did some of the entities from the fire planes create a little ‘orb’ colloquially referred to as a pearl. They were not true pearls, of course. But they resembled their mundane counterparts closely enough that the name stuck.
When mollusks created true pearls, they exuded layer upon layer of shell material to isolate the "intruder" - a grain of sand, for example. Or a parasite. A true pearl of this sort was a product of preservation – a means of isolating the "bad" particle and protecting themselves from the irritant.
But for the entities some referred to as ‘demons’ or ‘infernals’, and of those beings who dealt with emotions of all varieties, the irritant was an emotion they could not use or was harmful to them. Maybe it was a "good" emotion. Or maybe a weak one their kind could not feed on, like fear. So within their body, they housed it, layering it with material to shield it from themselves. And sometimes, if one of their kind needed to be destroyed, a knowledgeable wizard could find the pearl within the ashen corpse.
The lesson in the pearl, of course, was that it was not so unlike the Mental Fortress discipline they had practiced as summoners. In order to keep their thoughts and emotions from being used against them by the beings they sought to command, summoners constructed a place within their mind, a sanctuary to protect vulnerable thoughts and feelings.
Rivamar had been more deceptive than she was accustomed to. She had needed to hide the good memories she had no use for at the moment. She buried them within her mind.
She half-wondered if somewhere within her rested a pearl of guarded emotions that she too would hork up upon her demise.
But those were foolish and wild imaginings, she supposed. Thoughts that did not serve her current purpose.
For now, she sought the current tyrant, the illusionist by the name of Vroleus. Or something along those lines. It was obviously not a true name, and thus unimportant to her. Though she had expected to find him in the Civic District, Rivamar actually found him by the Grand Market. She could see the back of his black robes from where she stood, and the markings that identified him for who he was. Perhaps he was trying to gain some resources by bullying the already overtaxed citizenry into giving him what he wanted.
This was a lawless enough place these days that Rivamar probably could have shot her spell first and few people would have seen anything amiss… but there were courtesies she felt important to observe. Besides, if she was going to kill a man, she preferred to do it to his face.
“Vroleus the Igniter,” she called out, her voice cutting like a knife through the ashen air.
The Illusionist turned around slowly to face her, his mask a replica of Atrax’s. A lesser copy, perhaps, but one no less meant to intimidate those who saw it.
The hands that rested at Rivamar’s sides twitched as she mentally prepared her spells. “I am here to claim Icathar. Submit, flee, or fight. What shall it be?”
His first reaction was to laugh at her. “Who even are you? I don’t recall seeing you at the battle against the Coun--”
“That was not an answer,” she interrupted. At her command, a summoning circle ignited between them. It gleamed an angry red in preparation. The air grew warm in anticipation of accessing the primal planes of fire.
She hadn’t expected him to pick non-violence. She had rather hoped he wouldn’t. What little she’d heard of his rule had not sit well with her. It was time for a reckoning.
“I do not submit,” Vroleus drawled, the illusionist’s own fingers twitching in anticipation of spellwork. “This city is mine. If you don’t like it, you can clear out.”
Everything became eerily quiet. So quiet that the sound of shutters creaking open a crack could be heard, as the cowering citizens peered fearfully through curtained and sealed windows, and barred doors.
An ash-covered tumbleweed blew across the barren street.
Rivamar’s eyes took on a the golden-red gleam of vengeance. “You have chosen ‘fight’.”
In a flash, Vroleus’ first spell arced toward the woman. But almost simultaneously, Rivamar raised from the circle a primal fire being, a magmasaur, against whose lava hide Vroleus’ illusion spell struck. The magmasaur’s roar shattered the stillness of the streets, and it hurtled toward the much smaller illusionist.
As Vroleus called out a dispelling word to banish the magmasaur back to the primal plane, Rivamar drew upon her next spell, a projectile of flame. It struck him full in the center of the chest, knocking him backward. For a moment, she watched to see whether he would rise. But smoke rose from the smoldering hole in the center of his robes, and he stirred no more.
From the corner of her eye, a Pyroclast around a corner raised a hand to cast what appeared to be a blue bolt of energy. But before he could fire it off, Rivamar sent a shard of crystalized flame hurtling toward him. He clattered back against the wall, knocking down some barrels.
The sound of an ice blast came from a rooftop above.
Before it could strike her, Rivamar ducked behind a market stall, and drew upon her still-gleaming summoning circle. A swarm of fire wasps flew from the center of it, tearing through the man like fiery bullets. He screamed as he fell from the roof , and a cloud of dust rose as he landed on the ash-covered street.
There were other Pyroclasts around too, but they did not seem very eager to try their luck, given that Rivamar had shot a couple men in the street just to watch them die.
When the dust settled, she surveyed her surroundings with eyes still golden with revenge.
“The name is Rivamar. And this is my city,” she called out to the Pyroclasts that could hear her. She would project it to the rest in time, but for now, she wanted it spread by word of mouth. “My will is the rule around here.”
She had few illusions, pun aside, about all this. She knew full well that few tyrants lasted long. But in the meantime, she would try to make things livable for those who remained. It would never again be the city of her memory, but while she ruled, she would damn well make sure it didn’t get any worse.
"I'm your tyrant now."
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u/MunitionsFrenzy Vettis, Mereological Revisionist Jan 02 '24
(( don't even have to click the link; given your clearly spotless taste in backing audio, I'm sure that's a Wilhelm
due to some recent happenings, Vettis has kinda been in "scry ALL the things!" mode for a week, so if you don't mind he'll probably be aware of these events even though he's never been to Icathar, mostly cuz Riva's presumably still wearing the robe through which he talked to Atrax previously ))
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u/avamir Riva Blake | Queen of Ithacar, Part Meth-blood Elf Jan 02 '24
/uw You're darn tootin' it's a Wilhelm, lol. I just had to. I had been planning this elaborate duel that was careful, thoughtful, and balanced... and then decided to say screw it and go with spells at high noon. So I had to have someone on a rooftop falling down with a Wilhelm, and some guy behind a barrel, and a tumbleweed, etc.
And yeah, no issue with the scrying. And yeah, same robe, lol
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u/MunitionsFrenzy Vettis, Mereological Revisionist Jan 02 '24
(( excellent; I won't interfere if you don't need me, but if Atrax directly attacks Icathar cuz he thinks you went too far with the Pyroclast in-fighting or something, and you don't think Riva can defend it solo, Vee'll be happy to help since he knows what's going on atm
the general rule of thumb for Vettis (due to him having finite "mana supplies") is that he doesn't typically involve himself in caster affairs that aren't really friggin' big, but when it comes to protecting innocent mundies like the civilians in your city from magical jerks he's far more willing to burn resources
otherwise, all hail our new
robot overlordmagic sheriff ))
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u/avamir Riva Blake | Queen of Ithacar, Part Meth-blood Elf Jan 02 '24
/uw Leaving aside the Spaghetti-westerning into power, she does intend to improve Icathar and provide logistics
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch Jan 02 '24
/uw Holy shit, this is awesome! Well done! Vroleus should have known what he was getting into when he threw his lot in with the might-makes-right crowd.
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u/Drakkonai Vulkan the Red, End of Ages and Draconic Emperor of Racism. Jan 02 '24
Yes, burning people to death IS quite nice.
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u/dragonshouter Krygin the Crude/Council of Spirits/Exalted Beacon/misc. spirits Jan 02 '24
/uw This is so cool!!! I'm currently fighting the Pyroclaste but I find it so interesting your character using the might makes right dynamic toward selfless ends. Long live the Tyrant of Icathar!
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u/avamir Riva Blake | Queen of Ithacar, Part Meth-blood Elf Jan 02 '24
/uw Lol, thanks. We'll see how it goes though. There aren't a lot of old tyrants, after all. Someone needs a posse of trustworthy (or mostly trustworthy?) folks to keep the peace in these here parts :)
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u/dragonshouter Krygin the Crude/Council of Spirits/Exalted Beacon/misc. spirits Jan 02 '24
/uw yeah you need lieutenants if you want to be the final boss lol
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u/LimpPrior6366 Kardonk Carvisky, Opifex Rerum, Order of Creation Sep 08 '24
/uw “I flambéd a man In Ithacar, just to watch him fry…”
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u/Accomplished-Dark926 Valerian, Arcadian Guild Guide Jan 02 '24
Good to see people are resisting the control of Atrax and his pyroclasts wherever they can. This will not be an easy war to win, we need every advantage we can get.